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Aspirin may help women live longer -study
26 Mar 2007 20:00:12 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Michael Conlon
CHICAGO, March 26 (Reuters) - Taking one to 14 standard aspirin tablets a week reduces the overall risk of death in women, especially from heart disease, according to a study published on Monday.
Researchers found women who took aspirin regularly had a 25 percent lower risk of death during the 24 years of the study.
While there is considerable evidence that aspirin therapy improves survival in both men and women with established heart disease, information on its benefit for women without heart disease has been limited and conflicting, Dr. Andrew Chan and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School said.
"Use of aspirin for one to five years was associated with significant reductions in cardiovascular mortality," Chan's team wrote in this week's Archives of Internal Medicine.
"In contrast, a significant reduction in risk of cancer deaths was not observed until after 10 years of aspirin use."
Benefits were greatest in older women who took low to moderate doses.
The report was based on data taken from a study of nearly 80,000 U.S. nurses that began in 1976 and followed their health in detail. From 1980 through 2004 the women were asked every two years whether they used aspirin frequently and how much.
The women were specifically asked about standard, full-dose aspirin, and if they took 81 mg "baby" and "mini" aspirins were asked to count four of them as one standard aspirin.
At the beginning of the study the women had no history of heart disease.
In all 45,300 women did not use aspirin, 29,000 took one to 14 tablets a week and another 5,000 took more. By 2004 there were 9,477 deaths, 1,991 from heart disease and 4,469 from cancer.
Women who said they took aspirin had a 25 percent lower risk of death from any cause than women who never used aspirin regularly, the researchers reported.
The researchers said aspirin may help people live longer by reducing inflammation, lessening the damage to cells caused by oxygen exposure and through other mechanisms.
The findings do not imply that all women should take aspirin, Chan's team said. "Nevertheless, these data support a need for continued investigation of the use of aspirin for chronic disease prevention," they wrote.
The study was financed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
In commentary published in the same journal, Dr. John Baron of Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire said the study contrasts with earlier findings and that the accumulated evidence still suggests aspirin is not particularly effective for the primary prevention of death from cardiovascular disease in women.
He cited a study published in 2005 that studied almost 40,000 women during more than 11 years and found aspirin therapy had no effect on cardiovascular or other mortality.
"Which of these mega-studies is right?" he asked. "Both somehow? Neither?"
Baron said it often takes many different studies, looking at a question from different angle, to come up with good evidence about what the healthiest choice is for people.
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